A chance meeting at an inn in the Dolomites. An amateur Yiddish translator climbing and a woman whose father was a Nazi war criminal. This is only a brief encounter and everyone know who is truly other. In recounting this short time from the perspective of one then the other, Erri De Luca manages a new miniature (88 pages) of which he has the secret. And behind the main themes, one finds some of his major subjects: the taste of nature and sensuality of childhood memories. As often in the books of the Italian novelist, there is a taste of too little in the wrong soldier, an obvious frustration as we would like the author develops this relationship embryo so that the open end lets hope a possible sequel . Brilliant without ostentation, without touching pathos, powerful with an unusual evocative, poetic and remember to be realistic, the wrong soldier, read as fast as it is, leaves a lasting impression.
